Further Adventures of Raziel and Amanda
by Soul of Ashes
Summary: A seed of boredom was planted. Thus was written the 'further' adventures of Amanda and Raziel, in Amanda's hometown. AxR flirtation device required.
1. Chapter 1

This is a story about a Devourer of Souls, an Angel of Death, a Wraith - and his little witch-in-training. Do not be alarmed - this is not a self-insert (yeah, bullshit), and this is not taking place in a town where I live (Also bullshit). And so, without further adieu... I give you "Further Tales of Raziel and Amanda".

- - - - -

Chapter 1 - "Dirty Laundry"

Raziel was picking bits of dirt from his talons as Amanda began packing away clothes to be taken by the vampires to the laundry mat. It closed at 9, but the sun set later than it did in July and most of the vampires were old enough to stand a little prenight sunlight. It was late October, and Amanda had been living with the vampires for a week. She'd been calling up everyone the vampires knew of, witches, anthropologists, under the pseudonym, Stormrose.

She emptied the pockets of her jeans and pulled out a dollar. Her face brightened, the tiredness in her face momentarily obliterated. "Hey. Maybe this time we can go with them and visit the store. I want to get a soda. But maybe they'll recognize me too easily..."

Raziel looked over, his eyes ablaze as the candle light bounced off of them. "A promising idea, but you're right. You'll be recognized right away. I went out yesterday. You are missed in your hometown."

Amanda slowly put her pants into the basket. Her eyes were clouded with tears. "I miss mom. But I must let go!" She clenched her fists. "It's... so _hard_... god damn it. Not knowing if I'll ever see her again. And yet..."

The silence dropped between them like a stone until Raziel very slightly moved to face her in his leather chair.

"Nevermind," she went on, stuffing a last shirt into the bunch. Her back was to him, blocking his view, and she knew he hadn't been watching her so she put in personal things as well. She closed the basket lid and turned around. "Catch!"

Her legs felt like rubber at first, but she bunched her muscles, and jumped at Raziel. He stood up in time to catch her, forced to sit down hard as her momentum drove him back. His eyes flashed with anger and bemusement. "What was that all about?"

"Just wanted to see if you'd do it! Oh my god, that was thrilling! We've got to try that in the woods. I'll jump from a tree and--"

"You will break your arm or leg or your neck, because I refuse to involve myself in your cheap thrills." Raziel stood up again and set her firmly on her feet, his talons on her shoulders. His eyes narrowed dangerously. "Besides, I don't see how jumping out of trees will help me get home."

Amanda looked up at him, blinking innocently. "Oh... oh, please! You're so wound up in Nosgoth, it's like you can't allow yourself to have fun! How often does a pre-adult like me get to grab a stranger like you out of your world, and have fun with it?"

"I'm not an it," he muttered.

"I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about the situation. This is an opportunity to cut loose once in awhile. Do you know what cut loose means?"

Raziel considered the question. He had an idea what she meant, judging by how the conversation had gone so far. But he wasn't so sure he wanted to agree with her. If he didn't, she'd most likely get angry like she usually did whenever things did not necessarily go her way. She was already that comfortable with him to show him her darker side. Not without some understanding, he let it slide... only until she began getting nasty.

"What do you want me to, exactly?" he relented with a sigh.

She adopted a pouting face. Then she turned and rummaged through her clean clothes. "Oh, Darius?"

The vampire didn't come right away. But eventually he drifted into her bedroom with a lecherous grin on his young, pale white face. He gave her a fanged smile and leaned in the doorway, wearing a long, black leather jacket with too many zippers and pockets. His wavy dark hair, aside from his penetrating vampire eyes, was enough to give Amanda the creeps.

"What took you so long?"

"I was on the telephone," he replied coolly. "What is it you require?"

"I want to come with you to town. And then, if you don't mind, I'd like me and Raziel to go to the mall and hang out. And I don't want you hovering over us all the time. I want to have a good time, and Raziel does, too!"

"I do not--" Raziel snapped, but Amanda gave him a look. "I suppose I do," he sighed, giving Amanda his best snarling face.

- - - -

Raziel wore tight, worn jeans around his legs. His turtleneck accentuated his very finely chiseled body, down to his waist, where his jeans did the rest of the job for him. He wore a long, black jacket about mid-calf length. His dark brown boots, large but not necessarily ugly, covered his give-away taloned feet. Then, to complete the strange look, a pair of green-tinted shades to hide his unearthly yellow eyes, which often began to glow at random intervals of high emotion.

He turned around and watched Amanda walk out in a pair of warm, thick stretch flares, a studded black belt, her jacket, and a beanie. She looked at Raziel, whose gaze burned from behind his tinted shades. "Ooh. Look at me again like that and I may not be able to help myself." She sauntered up to him, bumped him with her hip. He caught her shoulders and leaned close, giving her a chaste little kiss on the corner of her mouth. Her cheeks colored instantly. "Raziel!"

"Yes?"

"You...you kissed me!" She lifted her hand to touch the spot where his lips had touched. He merely laughed at her.

"Would you like another?" His eyes flashed again as he tipped his glasses down his nose.

She turned her cheek to him with a smile. "Yes, please."

Darius led the way outside while Amanda and Raziel took turns carrying the basket of clothes down to the road, where the car was waiting for them. They piled inside. Amanda stared out the tinted windows, leaning across Raziel's lap, while he idly stroked her back for no reason other than to have something to do. Raziel wasn't... exactly nervous inside the car. He'd gone through time and space portals, and hurtling along at speeds he could not achieve alone over ground didn't phase him much at all.

When they reached the mainstreet, Amanda pressed her face against the cold glass in order to stare out the window toward her apartment. She twisted away, shivering and holding her face in her hands. They stopped just a little ways down the street, not even 20 yards, from the laundry mat.

Raziel opened the door (after struggling to find the handle), and stood outside. "Aren't you coming?"

"If I see that apartment, I'm not going to be able to go back," she said softly. Raziel leaned down, removing his shades and tossing them on the seat. He reached his hand in to her. Outside, the twilight made the whole world look blue. She slipped across the seat, quickly moving the shades out of her way, and stood up on the street. She shivered from the cold that bit at her cheeks. She pulled the basket from the trunket and took it inside, where Darius took care of the rest.

As if by unspoken word, Raziel and Amand crossed the street and walked together alone down the street, past the pharmacy store and the Chinese restaurant and down past three pubs, a bar called the General's Gate. They went to the park, walking side-by-side.

She wondered if the slow pace aggravated him. She glanced up at him. His pale, sharp features seemed undisturbed; indeed, maybe they looked a little happier than usual. His eyes beheld everything with a sort of quiet wonder and acceptance, from the perfectly square garbage bins built into the ground.

"Wish it would snow," she said quietly, smiling. "While we were out here..."

"I can imagine," he said. The lights throughout the swelling park area began to seem more brighter as the sun drifted farther away, the overcast sky blotting out the sight of the moon. He pointed to a covered wooden bridge that crossed the river. "What's that?"

"Oh... People call it the kissing bridge. Folks write their names together on it with knives or pencils or pens. Isn't it beautiful?" She walked along a bit faster, jaunted up the short space and disappeared into the bridge.

There was a flourescent light hanging above them. By the time Raziel had run into the bridge, Amanda had managed to climb halfway up the walls of the bridge toward the dusty, cobwebbed rafters. She couldn't quite make the rest of the climb, because she was very scared of heights she wasn't familiar with, and because the rafter was too far away to grab.

Raziel looked up at her, blinking against the flourescent light. "What do you think you're trying to accomplish?"

"I don't want to hear it," she mumbled, hanging from the wall, staring down at him. "I just want to get down now."

"Well, jump. I'll catch you."

"Are you crazy?"

"Does it not seem the very same thing as jumping out of a tree? You got yourself up there. Now you must come down." He stood closer to her and held out his arms. "Jump."

Amanda reluctantly pushed off and let go. She tumbled down and landed roughly in his arms. He quickly set her down. He looked annoyed. Amanda turned away. "Why d'you flirt with me all the time?"

"I don't flirt. It's my natural sexual allure as a soul-eating monster of doom," he shrugged his shoulders, but she saw his dark lips curve into a smirk. She punched him in the arm, then grabbed him, dragging him outside the bridge.

"Quick, before I start kissing you on the Kissing Bridge!" she laughed, stumbling outside and collapsing onto a bench. She took off her beanie, and raked her hands through her short hair.

"Oh my god, look, it's him!" a voice cried. Amanda shot straight up, clenching the little hat over her head, trying to hide her face. But it wasn't her the voices were interested in.

About three or four girls latched onto Raziel out of nowhere. He froze right in place, suddenly finding himself captive to a bunch of giggling, crazy women.

"God, he's so hot! I can't believe we've got him!" "This is so amazing! Feel his arm, it's so hard!" "Who cares? I get to feel his--"

"BACK OFF! Amanda screamed, lunging at the bunch of girls. She roared at them to the best of her ability, scaring even herself. She pulled at their arms, snarling and carrying on. Some of the girls let go.

"Freak!"

"Raziel, run! Watch out, I've got rabies!"

"You've had babies...?"

"No, rabies, retard! Run away!"

Before Raziel could ask exactly what she meant by rabies, the girls slowly walked away, talking amongst themselves and cursing Amanda behind her back. She dusted off her hands, then said something under her breath. One of the girls screeched, "My nose!" and all of them started hurrying even faster.

"What did you do?" Raziel asked, looking suspiciously over his shoulder at the girls when they began to walk back to the laundry mat.

"Gave her a bloody nose. C'mon, we've lingered too long."


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes:** What the hell? THIS old thing? Out of the darkness of time, I update my LoK fanfiction...because I miss Raziel and my old nerdy dumb self. I resurrected this out of sheer boredom... and I'm currently entertaining more crossover fun. Not that it hasn't been done yet. I don't dare undertake more fanfics. I can't really handle the burden of balancing the ones I've got going now!

* * *

**Can and Can't**

Raziel had depleted every soul that could haunt the woods surrounding the lair they shared with Darius. When Raziel told Amanda this, he looked a horror - the magic that kept him looking prim and proper only worked as long as he had souls to power it. Amanda nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw him enter her little room without flesh, his tattered wings dangling and his muscled form completely devoid of skin.

The corpse who bore the name Raziel seemed embarassed, but he said (managing speech in a way Amanda couldn't really understand yet), "As you can see, I am feeling a bit peckish for souls. I've eaten all the ones I can find. Time is running out."

Amanda panicked. She stormed around the room in a raging fit, furious with herself for not working fast enough, being good enough. Raziel, not really afraid but staying out of her way more as a state of preserving what was left of his body from her rage, hid roosting on top of a large stone outcropping. Finally he jumped down and grabbed her with his talons, diffusing her wrath in an instant.

"You put me in a state of regret," he said darkly. "Do not make me regret letting you live by acting like a child. Put your head on straight, girl!"

Amanda cowered slightly. His eyes were pouring out that same ethereal smoke she had found alluring, but now she avoided his gaze as if she were the one to be embarassed. Terror struck into her heart. Not because Raziel scared her, but the fact that he was angry with her made her anxious. She hated her temper, and more than anything wished she could control it and always be calm and collected--

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, "I don't work all that well under pressure, y'know?" Detangling herself from his claws which left white tracks on her arms, she pored over some old text. She seemed to sense more than see Raziel fold his arms over his exposed ribcage.

In a few minutes, she expelled a glad little cry and thrust a book at him open to a page. "This. I don't know, but... I think I can replenish the souls. I'm pretty sure I can draw spirits from other areas to this one so you don't have to go far. It may take some doing, though."

"Do whatever it takes. If you fail... I'll be stuck in the Spectral Realm--"

"I know, I know," Amanda interrupted, waving away his worries.

Raziel frowned with the muscles of his eyes, then turned away to let her work and to find a place to brood. As he moved, his body became less and less capable of doing the necessary movements, so he sheltered himself on the leather sofa with his arms around his knees, nearly invisible except for the quietly brewing gleam of his drooping eyes.

An hour or so later, the human girl scurried outside with a bundle of sticks, incense, candles, and a live rabbit kicking to be free from her grasp. She seemed all too reluctant to use a living sacrifice, but she needed to do this for Raziel. She steeled her will, muttering to herself, the chanting beginning to feel weighted with true power. The rabbit had been caught for such a purpose as deemed by Amanda, imploring Darius for animals. The vampire had sneered that he condemned the task of capturing live prey, but with a single glare from Raziel it had been done.

Raziel had crept out with her, crouching like an animal at a safe distance. The woods seemed to expectant, swelling with unimaginable energies. Raziel began to feel inklings of excitement stirring in his spiritual form, as magic akin to his own reckoned with the souls far and wide. As the spell moved to its peak stages, Raziel felt a jarring pull at his own bindings. Amanda cried out and lifted her arms. Though unseen to most eyes, a swarm of spirits of the lingering dead filled the sky above, all of them screaming with indignation, fear, or worse yet - wrath.

They scattered, but none wandered too far. The spell set up a sort of magnetic vortex that drew souls to it, with the exception of Raziel's. Thus the souls moved in a spiral, a wheel, like a small galaxy.

Amanda fell onto her side. Raziel, snapping up a soul along the way, pounced toward her. The spiritual energy of a single soul filled out his form, but it was almost more horrible with organs and things laying inside a string web of flesh.

"Is that... enough?" she gasped, her skin so pale it looked as white as the pages of her new books. Raziel sighed over her drain of energy and lifted her as he would lift a doll, cradling her head and moving her within the confines of their cave.

"It will serve," he said gently, laying her to sleep. He raked his talons through his hair, and noticed that he was, once again, disheveled and unclothed.

In the wardrobe shared with the girl, he dug out clothes and pulled them on. At Amanda's insistence, even if he was most comfortable and not at all ashamed to be running about in his "birthday suit", as she haply nicknamed nudity, he was to be dressed at all times. Also, he discovered he could manifest himself in his full, terrifying soul reaving form at will... but that somehow didn't please him as much as it used to.

He prowled the forest in the reaver shape, terrifying animals into hiding and devouring one or two souls. The trees were teeming with living spirits. He almost felt sorry for them. However they may have died, none of the spirits that ever lingered stayed because they wanted to. They died mostly painful deaths. But sometimes spirits lingered because of someone they loved, deeply and desperately enough to wish to remain from the purifying cycle. That wish was powerful enough to move worlds.

Raziel contemplated those souls. They were quiet and said not a word to him, but they watched him sometimes just as intensely.

"What do you think about?" he asked aloud. Suddenly, he recieved an answer:

"The wind."

A spirit moved around from his left, and he nearly jumped when he heard the voice. He often heard the dead's cries. But this voice was small and like a child, but the form was female and fully-grown.

"It is all the things the air is. And I can't feel the air anymore."

"How very odd," Raziel noted dryly. "I can't feel the air either. Nor can I taste food, drink water, or touch another's skin. All that I can feel now is the hunger for the vast bodies I call souls."

The spirit hugged herself and smiled. It was strange to see a ghost smile, with no eyes but glowing spheres to show mirth. "But spirits such as we... are made of the emotions that floated us from our graves. We can feel many things most living mortals cannot anymore. They feel no closer to themselves than they are to the center of the earth."

"Nothing elevates me. Not much incites me to live but revenge..." The three-clawed talon of his left hand began to close into a tight fist, that could smash a man's skull like a hammer to a pumpkin.

"But you're with that girl. I saw the way you picked her up and brought her inside. You can't tell me you didn't feel anything then."

"I--" Indignant, Raziel stood up and left the tree he was sitting beneath. He could have devoured that ghost and ceased the inane babbling. Surely the thing was mad. No, no, best forget about it.

The young witch's pink hand was dangling from the edge of the sofa, her arm draped around another pillow. An empty plate of something called "rah-men" sat on the floor. One last noodle was draped over the edge of the bowl. The flavored powder left a thick smell in the air that was dizzying. Amanda's eyes were closed and her breathing deep and even. Usually a good meal and sleep was enough to revive her. He was silent as he picked up the bowl and returned it to the sink, and crept back to find her still resting.

The Soul Reaver crouched by her side, mindful that he did not touch her at all. But her hair seemed out of place... or rather, did not look comfortable as it was. He extended his arm, each sinuous muscle flexing and moving. He was still a perfect machine of murder, the Angel of Death, and nothing he could do could change that irrevokable truth to a happy, managable fiction. The tips of his talons were lethal sharp, but he sifted them through her cropped locks gently, embracing his own dangerous thoughts with steel-trap silence.

At the first stirring of her eyelids, he abandoned his physical body in a panic and dashed to the portal. No. No, he sternly disregarded that feeling. If he had a heart, it would have been pounding as he reclaimed his physical form in an alcove by the entrance.

Trembling, he placed his claws on the wall and bowed his head. _No more_, he begged someone, anyone, silently - the first time to beg for anything in his unlife. _I cannot bear this, please!_

No one answered.


End file.
